I was always sad when it was time to leave but the social workers who facilitated the meetings assured us that we would see each other again.
Eventually Shane was sent to jail and Terri remained in rehab. Our dysfunctional family was finished and the police had finally delivered on their promise: Shane was locked up and couldn’t hurt us anymore. The scars from those early years, however, were deep-set and had an effect on all of us. For my part, I was having behavioural issues. Kirsten and I were mixed up. We had trouble accepting adult authority and bonding with anyone or trusting them. And we had been split up from our brothers, which was deeply upsetting and unsettling. We had formed such a tight unit to survive that to suddenly be apart felt isolating and far more scary than anything we’d had to deal with in the previous years.
The plans were finalised after about six weeks of being moved around. Harry and Jamie were to be adopted by a couple who lived several miles away. They had a new home and a new life. Jayden was to be adopted by Nan and Granddad. I later learned that they had wanted to keep us all and, if we had the choice, that was where we would have wanted to be. However, as Nan and Granddad were old, social services deemed that they would not be capable of providing the sort of environment we needed. Instead, they agreed to let them have Jayden because he was the eldest. He moved to Cheshire to be with them.
Kirsten and I were placed with the couple we had been told about on a long-term temporary basis while the authorities tried to find someone who would take us on permanently. Partly I was excited by the movement and not knowing where we would end up. I had never experienced certainty or security; I was used to living from day to day, not knowing what would happen or where I would end up – whether that was the hospital or the police station.
In those weeks after the knife attack, I never thought about my parents. I didn’t care what happened to them. When I was told by a social worker that Shane had been jailed, I was glad. I knew my life was better without him in it and both he and Terri had failed me so often, I didn’t grieve for them, miss them or even worry about what was happening to them as I was becoming immune to the emotions I should have been feeling in such uncertain circumstances. Stuff just happened and I moved on.
We never went back to the house and we never lived together again as siblings, which was sad as we had formed such a special bond under the extreme circumstance. We also never lived with our parents again, and while I missed my brothers and sister, quite simply, I did not care if I ever saw Terri or Shane again.
Chapter four
FOREVER FAMILIES
Graham and Pauline had a very nice house in the suburbs of a town an hour’s drive away from where I had lived previously. Kirsten and I didn’t know how long we were going to be living with them. In social services speak we were told the stay would be long term but not permanent. We started to hear the language and phrases that you come across in the care system. Graham and Pauline were not a ‘forever family’, they were the stepping-stone until we found someone who would permanently adopt us. They were older than the other people we had been placed with, which is quite possibly why they were not considered suitable to have us forever. I think they must have been in their fifties and, in comparison to where we had come from, they were settled and stable with a good home.
Pauline was a kind lady with good intentions. However, Graham made me feel uncomfortable. Sometimes he would walk around the house naked, which I found creepy. He was an old man and it turned my stomach. I was beginning to realise that the care system was a hotchpotch of characters; some were good-natured and kind, others were evil and many more were just plain weird. Most seemed to have as many issues as the kids they were supposed to be looking after.
Graham and Pauline’s house was big, smart and very well kept. I can only imagine the expressions on their faces when Kirsten and I arrived. We looked like a couple of orphans – grubby, badly behaved and dressed in mismatched clothes. Then again, we came from a stinking hellhole. Their house resembled a show home. We had no manners, no table manners and hygiene issues. Practically feral, we had never been encouraged to clean or look after ourselves. It was a complete culture shock to go from where we had lived to such an ordered, pristine environment and I hated it.
Pauline and Graham were fanatical about their garden, which was manicured and stocked to bursting with pretty shrubs and flowers. It was their pride and joy. Their love of gardening bordered on the obsessive; it looked like they lived in a garden centre. Pauline especially would spend hours and hours outside whenever the weather allowed. Never happier than when she was up to her elbows in mud, kneeling on the lawn to tend her borders, she encouraged Kirsten and me to take an interest in the garden and we loved having the space to run around. She explained what all the different plants were and what had to be done to care for them. In summer, she would take us into the garden and pick flowers with us and, in the autumn, we would pick fruit from the trees. She would make delicious apple pies and poached pears.
The detached house was posh and spotless but it was too clean. It was so perfect I was scared to do anything that would mess it up. The lovely plush sofas in the lounge had plastic covers on them so they didn’t get dirty. It puzzled me why someone would invite children into their house and then not make it child-friendly. Although Pauline did nice things with us and spent time with us, she was adamant that we kept the house pristine. She encouraged us to spend as much time as possible in the garden but then told us off if we stepped mud into the house. It didn’t seem fair but, if we tried to explain that to her, we got told off for being cocky.
She also took an interest in what we wore. We arrived with no clothes and had been used to wearing whatever was provided for us in the homes we stayed in. Pauline bought us completely new wardrobes… and all the outfits were the same. She dressed us like twins and, possibly because she was older, she chose old-fashioned clothes. Previously we’d been decked out in trackie bottoms and hoodies but Pauline insisted we wore little dresses, most of them frilly with floral prints. We looked like extras from that TV show Little House on the Prairie. I just didn’t feel like me – it felt like someone else was trying to force their personality on me.
Worse still, we were made to go to church and Sunday school. We were sent off with friends of theirs (they didn’t go). Each Sunday we were dressed in our pretty, twee little dresses and packed off to the local church, where we sang hymns and prayed, and then afterwards we were herded into the church hall next door to learn about Jesus and colour in pictures of bible stories. I had never been to church before and I hadn’t even been christened. Soon I was utterly bored by the whole thing and, within a couple of weeks, I started to misbehave and run away. Looking back, I think Pauline and Graham were probably on some sort of misguided mission to save our souls and educate us.
There were strict boundaries laid down at their house. We were told what was expected of us. But we had never had boundaries before and we didn’t know how we were supposed to respond to them. We were expected to help with the cleaning and to keep a normal routine, which meant chores and a set bedtime. So we helped out, we did the dishes, and I realise now that it was really good as we needed the discipline but underneath it all there seemed to be this weird undercurrent. I think they believed they had a duty to make us little angels; they were on a crusade to exorcise the evil of our past and, to some degree, it was almost scarier than where we had been previously, because at least there I knew who the enemy was.
As the months progressed, I bonded with Pauline. She took me for days out and she gave us attention. She spent time with both of us and did cooking. I didn’t bond with Graham at all, though – he gave me the creeps.
Although we were like savages when we arrived, I picked things up quickly and Pauline did understand about our behavioural problems (she had been briefed by social services). She had patience and we were never told off for not having table manners because she understood it was not our fault. When we were behaving, we were always ver
y polite but, every now and then, we would do something that would cause concern.
One morning I was in the bathroom and I saw Graham’s razor on the shelf. I’d seen adverts of men shaving and so I thought I’d try it to see what it felt like. It didn’t occur to me that women and children didn’t shave. No one had explained about shaving so I reached up and got the razor. I didn’t understand that you needed shaving foam so I just copied what I’d seen on the Gillette adverts on TV, drawing the razor up and down my face. It felt smooth but caught on my skin every few centimetres. As well as vertical strokes, I also pulled the razor horizontally across my skin – I assumed the red lines it left were normal. After a few minutes, my face was a smear of blood and I realised something was wrong. I ran out of the bathroom to show Kirsten. She took one look at the blood dripping from my cheeks and neck and screamed.
‘Lauren’s dying!’ she cried.
Pauline came running up the stairs and her eyes widened when she saw me. Her reaction scared me and I started crying.
‘Oh, God, what have you done to yourself?’ she exclaimed.
‘I was shaving,’ I sobbed.
She took me in the bathroom and tried to clean me up but the bleeding wouldn’t stop, so she drove me to hospital. Although there was a lot of blood, the cuts were not deep so there wasn’t much they could do apart from apply ointment to make sure there was no infection and put plasters on the bigger cuts.
Pauline sometimes got stressed by situations but usually took incidents such as this in her stride. To me she seemed like Hyacinth Bucket in the comedy series Keeping Up Appearances. She spoke in a posh accent and she was slightly eccentric too. She would talk to a huge teddy bear that she kept in the lounge. I was terrified of it – I was convinced it would tell her if I was naughty.
Although the house never felt like a home, I do have some good memories of it. For the first time in our lives, we went on holidays. We were taken on a boat trip, a big cruise ship, to the Isle of Man. We also went to Butlins, and Nan and Granddad came to visit us there. In the evenings, we all settled in the lounge and watched old people’s telly, like Last of the Summer Wine.
Christmas was a spectacular affair with Pauline and Graham: they went over the top with decorations and competed with the neighbours to create the most festive themed house. They strung hundreds of lights over the front of the building and the front garden. Graham spent a whole day preparing the display, which must have cost hundreds. There were novelty decorations such as Santas and snowmen dotted around the front garden, which was transformed into a grotto from the start of December until after New Year. We were led outside once everything was in place and then the switch was flicked, which lit up the whole house. People used to visit just to see the lights.
Christmas Day was all about food. We got presents but we were not spoilt. Pauline cooked traditional Christmas lunch with all the trimmings and started preparing weeks before the day. She made fabulous Christmas cakes. My favourites were her homemade coconut-covered teacakes.
While living there, Kirsten and I started a new primary school and I settled into the routine easily – I was always very optimistic about meeting people and confident when it came to making friends; however, I was emotionally unstable. I had difficulty moderating my moods. Often I didn’t know how I felt; I would smile one minute and cry the next. I was confused. Sometimes I didn’t know who I was or how I was supposed to act.
In all, I was with Pauline and Graham for two years, which was an unusually long time to be in foster care. There were some good times but there were difficult bits too. I never warmed to Graham and some of his habits unsettled me. He was too open when it came to nudity and I found this worrying, especially after the abuse I had suffered at the hands of Pat.
All the while, the plan was to find Kirsten and me a permanent family to live with but, because we were to be adopted together, there were fewer candidates willing to take us on. Our reports, which prospective parents were given, also detailed the neglect and abuse we had suffered with our parents and most likely would have put many potential adopters off. None of them would have been given the details of my history of sexual abuse because, although I had explained what had happened to the social workers, I was never taken seriously. Nothing was ever investigated. This meant that whoever did eventually become my forever family would not know the full facts of what they were getting themselves into.
Amazingly, in the background while all this was going on, Terri and Shane still had a say in where we went. They were more than happy to be rid of us but were required to approve whatever placements we had. Terri agreed to every single foster placement I had been on. Shane didn’t, and just wanted to attack everyone; he didn’t want us to be in care. Although he himself wouldn’t have taken us on, he didn’t want anyone else to have us – he was that sort of person. Neither of them ever showed any guilt over the way they treated us.
Throughout our time with Pauline and Graham we attended parties organised by social services for children in care. People wishing to adopt came along too. The events were billed as parties but, really, they were shop windows for potential adoptive parents to view the kids the council had on its books. We all wore nametags, so if someone liked us they knew who we were. The mayor always attended and gave out awards to children – I’m not sure what the criteria was for winning but I never got one. I used to enjoy these events because there would be plenty of party food and I got the chance to see my brothers there.
As the years passed I began to realise that I was different. As a child in care you are treated differently, when really all you want is to be treated the same as everyone else. Teachers were overly sensitive, which at times bordered on pity. I had friends who had stable families and they never said anything or made me feel differently, but there were rules about the way I could live, which didn’t apply to them. For example, I had a best friend called Samantha at school, but I could never go round her house because I was in care. I wasn’t allowed on sleepovers unless the parents of the person I was staying with had been approved by the council and passed security checks. And I wasn’t allowed on school trips without special permission from my case worker. I was in the care system and, because of that, I was classed as vulnerable, even though I was living long term with Pauline and Graham.
Just after the second anniversary of our placement, Kirsten and I received a visit from one of the social workers who had been involved in our case. There had always been regular contact with social workers and in lieu of not having parents who were capable of looking after us we had someone assigned to us called a ‘guardian ad litem’. This was a person appointed by the court for any child who was subject to court proceedings. Usually they were social workers who had a judicial role; we rarely saw ours. Instead, we saw social workers like the one who came that day. She saw us often and had been speaking about a possible forever family in a nearby town. She had mentioned a name, Barbara, and seemed very keen that the placement should work out.
‘She is a very caring lady. She has two teenage children and a partner who is lovely but who doesn’t live with her,’ she explained. ‘She is very keen to meet you.’
But I was indifferent about the whole thing. I’d been told that Pauline and Graham were not going to be permanent carers so I was always waiting to be moved on. In some respects, I was glad the time was finally arriving.
On the visit in question the social worker seemed anxious. She had some news to share before she spoke further about how our planned adoption was progressing.
‘It’s my duty to tell you that your father has been sentenced to time in prison,’ she said quietly. Despite the fact that Shane and Terri were not our legal guardians anymore, the social workers had a duty to tell us whenever anything happened to one of them that would affect the infrequent visits we had with them. Often we heard that Terri was in hospital for one thing or another, but this time the news was that once again Shane had been jailed. I’m not sure of the full details but, as most
of his convictions were for violence, I assumed he had beaten someone up.
It didn’t bother me to hear that we wouldn’t be seeing him for a while but Kirsten took the news badly and started crying. The social worker tried to cheer her up.
‘But I have good news too,’ she said, ushering us to the sofa. ‘Sit down and turn on the TV, I have something to show you.’
Pauline and Graham must have known about the surprise as they stood in the background, smiling as she pulled a DVD from her bag and put it in the DVD player.
The screen lit up to show a woman’s grinning face.
‘Hiya, I wanna be your new mum,’ she said softly. She was wearing a bright-green top and her dyed blonde hair was scraped back off her face.
I laughed – I didn’t know what else to do. The woman on the screen looked funny; her outfit made her look like Kermit the Frog. Kirsten was silent.
‘This is Barbara,’ explained the social worker as the woman on the screen babbled on about how excited she was to meet us. ‘She has a lovely home, which she wants to share with you. How do you feel about that, Lauren?’
‘I’m hungry,’ I replied.
I got up and walked into the kitchen to see if there was any cake. When I came back out, it was explained to me that Barbara was what is called a ‘prospective adoptive parent’ and that she would be coming to visit us with her teenage children to see if we all got along. The social worker kept repeating what a nice lady she was and how much she loved kids.
‘It will mean that you girls can both stay together, which is very important,’ she said.
It had been over two years since we were taken into care and Barbara was the first adoptive parent we had heard about. I imagine that the people in charge of adoptions were very keen for things to work out between Barbara and us. It certainly seemed that way.
In the following weeks, we had three introductory meetings. Barbara and her family came to visit us at Pauline and Graham’s on a Sunday afternoon. It all felt very awkward. She arrived with her two children: David, 12, and Sharon, 15. When she first saw us she beamed and looked us up and down like someone might eye a new dress on a hanger.
Girl for Sale Page 4